This meeting of the City Property Committee covered the disposition of multiple city-owned properties, including a Port Authority parcel, five former municipal buildings, and two fire stations. The committee heard presentations from city officials, discussed changes to the RFP process to improve developer flexibility, and voted on recommendations.
Please read this letter into the record to make my colleagues in the public aware of the reason for my absence. Some Council Burgo. Some Council Choquett, I'm ready to inform you that I'm unable to attend tonight's committee meeting because I will be attending a ward one neighborhood meeting. Please read this letter into the record to make my colleagues in the public aware of the reasons for my absence. Motion received and place on file by Council Lopes. Second by Councillor Roy. All in favor, say aye. I've it. Item number one communication, Council Giesta submitting a letter from Blair Bailey, General Counsel for the New Bedford Port Authority regarding the port authorities vote to sell the real property known and numbered as 276 MacArthur Drive, incorporating New Bedford assessors map 59, lots 170, 171, 173, and 149 and 217. It was referred here on September 25th, 2025. Second. The ayes have it. Evening. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Give us a brief overview as to what uh these lots are and what we're going to do with it. So for those of you you already know this, but the all the city property down in the waterfront is subject to the jurisdiction of the port authority. So everything is in our under our control, but there's some exceptions to that in our enabling legislation. When we want to dispose of a piece of property, we have to generally the way that as it says in my letter, the way our enabling legislation is written, I'm supposed to come to you with a done deal with an RFP, so you approve the deal. This is what we're doing. We're going to put an RFP out. And those of you that know the maritime terminal property, that is a very large building and a very large piece of property, and it makes us $12,000 a year. And isn't worth the $25 million investment for $45 more years of that lease. We're rebuilding Leonard's Wharf. We need to do Homer's Wharf next. Those are our priorities. Any purchaser of this property, so it's an open RFP. Anybody can bid, but anybody bidding has to take it subject to that lease. That is the law. They are committed to the city. They're from the North End. They have a business. They want to put a lot of money into this property. However, since at the end of the lease, they wouldn't own the building, the bank is obviously a little res reticent to loan them a substantial amount of money on that property because at the end of the day it's not theirs and it wouldn't continue to be there. So that's sort of the where they're stuck in this process. So we have to go out to bid. It's an open RFP. Anybody can bid on it. We will get the bids once we get the bids, they'll come back to the council for approval of the deal. But that's the way it works. Thank you, Blair. Hold on, my uh colleagues. Uh if you're uh wearing a hat in the chamber, can I just kindly ask you to remove it? Thank you. Uh Chair recognizes Council Lopes. Thank you, Council Chair. So, Attorney Bailey, I'm assuming the RFP will be written in a manual that will state that they'll be responsible for the maintenance up here, upkeep and repair of the facility? Correct. So the city will have no liability associated with any of the associated maintenance to deferred maintenance. No, we were selling it as is where is and they will assume the liability to do that.